Making Music and a New Life

Abstract

This chapter reviews Esther Lederberg’s life in music. Researchers who study multiple intelligences have observed an overlap between musical and linguistic intelligence. Esther Lederberg’s mastery of foreign languages would have given her confidence to independently master the recorder. Her enthusiasm for music resonated with her French colleagues, Jacob and Monod, at the Institut Pasteur. Probably the most famous musician/scientist of the twentieth century was Albert Einstein, who admitted that if he hadn’t become a physicist, he would have become a musician. In the 1960s, Early Music—of the Renaissance and Baroque eras—enjoyed an international revival. In 1962, Esther Lederberg and some like-minded amateur musicians founded the Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra (MPRO). She performed with the MPRO for over forty years. This shift in her social circle marked a new phase of personal growth toward music and the arts. Drawn together by a shared passion for music, Matthew Simon and Esther Lederberg married in 1993.